About Brenda

Brenda and Trudi helping at the Festival of Quilts

I met Brenda a couple of months ago when she came up for a visit to see the New English Quilter. Brenda went home with a frame and I gained a friend. Brenda was an accomplished machine quilter long before she ever saw our frame. She's been teaching classes and making amazing quilts for years. In the end she opted for a frame, to take the aggravation out of the machine quilting process. She was fed up with wrestling with all that fabric under the arm of the machine. She wanted a way of quilting that was kinder to her back and neck.

The challenge for Brenda was going to be translating her expertise from off-the-frame to on-the-frame quilting. The photos here are some close up shots of Brenda's practice pieces. You can see pretty clearly that she more than met the challenge! Clicking on the images will give you a better view of the stitching.

Brenda has an enquiring mind of a practical nature. She's always trying to figure out why things work or don't work and how to make it better. While Brenda was getting acquainted with the frame, she began emailing me all sorts of hints and tips for getting the most out of it. She's used the frame in ways I never would have thought of. and come up with solutions to practical issues that I would have just put up with.I'll be sharing more about these tips in future posts.I'll end this one with some shots of Brenda's Baby Trapunto.

Hits the floor running

Meet Brenda from Stevenage, UK. I've made the image extra large here so you can see the kind of practice piece quilting Brenda has been doing the past few weeks. Pretty impressive! Brenda is already an accomplished machine quilter, but she wanted a quicker method that was easier on the body so she came to visit us and went home with a New English Quilter/JUKI/Nifty Grips combination. As you can see from the photo, Brenda pretty much hit the floor running!

Brenda embroidered, pieced and machine quilted this gorgeous Parasols and Pansies quilt off the frame, in memory of her mother, Lucy who loved the colours. This quilt has gained quite a following on both sides of the Atlantic. It's soon be featured in several magazines so you're bound to see it again. Brenda will be bringing it to our stand at the Festival of Quilts next month. You'll be able to meet Brenda and her gorgeous quilt if you visit on the Friday or Saturday of the show.

"It was shortly after the completion of this quilt that I announced to my husband Jim that I would never make a quilt like this again, my arms were aching from the weight of the quilting, worried that I really meant this, he went on line and found the You Tube of the New English Quilter, an answer to my prayers, it was soon after that we were on our way to Lincoln to pick up my NEQ frame. Since then I have been practising on my frame as often as I can. My next quilt will be a walk in the park, it feels so good not to have the quilt wrapped around the machine, with me in the middle struggling with aching arms, instead it sits on the frame and I can sedately quilt without all those pressures, I think what I like the most is that the feed rollers keep all layers of the quilt even and unwrinkled even the biggest quilt would not seen daunting to me now."                                               Brenda,  Stevenage, UK